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Each day as I follow the COVID-19 news on any cable news network, there is a consistent and disturbing trend being observed: "U.S. Posts largest single-day jump in new COVID-19 cases."
This is clearly disheartening, and it almost seems incomprehensible to see this in America.
As one of those people who has been extremely careful to observe all recommended protocols in order to avoid the possibility of becoming infected, I find it to be truly disturbing that not only is the U.S. experiencing higher rates of infection and deaths, but the Trump Administration appears to be clueless and admittedly has absolutely no plan what so ever to attack the problem. They seem to feel proud to say that they are not responsible for any of this.
Trump himself seems obsessed with the stock market and jobs numbers and how the economy is roaring back and by November 3rd will be back like it was before. The POTUS wants states to reopen their economies and schools fully and quickly. And he wants churches to open up quickly too.
As "hot spots" of the virus infection spread across the country, the Federal Government seems to be clueless as to what is actually going on out there in the real world that the rest of us live in. To accompany the increase in cases, the number of jobless Americans has increased to at least 10 million more than before the pandemic began, according to a report by CNBC.
Each day there seems to be an increased number of states setting records for numbers of cases reported. Now at the top of the pile are the states of Florida, Arizona and Texas. California has had to reinstate some shut-down regulations amid rising cases.
In contrast I have looked into how a successful handling of the pandemic differs from how the Trump Administration has "handled" it. I chose for my comparison the country of Thailand. My son is currently living there, and so I have some first-hand information regarding all of this.
First of all during January of this year, my son told me that they were being given temperature checks as they entered restaurants and bars or any building where people were sitting close together. Then a night-time curfew was put in place soon after that. Next followed a lockdown of what had been everyday life to ensure that infection was under control. That quick action on the part of Thailand's government officials, along with border closings, helped at the very beginning of the pandemic.
They used the information that China had released to the world regarding the virus, which included a partial genome of the virus, which proved to be very helpful.
But certainly a major factor making Thailand better off than some other countries was its capacity to detect and manage cases. Thailand was the first country to confirm a COVID-19 case outside of China, according to the World Health Organization. This was on January 8, 2020. At this same time Trump was apparently calling the COVID-19 Virus a "hoax" created to make him look bad. He was also at this same time saying that Chinese President Xi was doing a great job handling the virus, as was being reported at the time by CBS, NBC and ABC Newscasts.
Meanwhile in Thailand the medical researchers were on top of the virus, creating a partial genetic blueprint of the new, infamous corona virus. They then created a test that could detect the novel corona virus, which had previously been detected in Horseshoe Bats in China, the World Health Organization reported. Then on January 11, 2020 the full genetic sequence was released to the entire world.
Thailand had successfully and independently confirmed its first case of Corona Virus. Thailand had already established networks of approved testing centers across the country. They then developed their own test kits and protocol. This all happened in January of 2020.
Every province in that country has a laboratory of its own, and there are 77 provinces. Constant and ongoing research keeps the scientific community on alert all of the time. This is the way that things should work in all countries around the globe with the capacity to use science to its advantage.
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